Wilkins walked down the street, the same street he had walked down many times before.

But this time things were different. This time, he was not in full control of what he was doing: this time, he was being pushed on to a destination he did not yet know against his will. This time, he was being controlled.

And he was aware of it, too. But there was nothing he could do about it. He remembered the suspect from the Stacey Barman case showing up, with something terribly wrong about his appearance, and shortly after that he’d become this… husk, this shell, this automaton, albeit an automaton that had consciousness and life behind its eyes, even if it wasn’t in control of its own destiny.

The day was just beginning, but Wilkins knew it would be busy in the city. It was the first day of the big sales, and he was supposed to be part of the team ensuring that the crowds didn’t get too out of hand. He hadn’t expected them to, not in a peaceful city like this, but the force had considered it prudent to have a certain amount of presence in the area just in case anyone did feel like starting something.

He was dressed in his police uniform. He didn’t feel like he deserved to wear it in his current state, but that was out of his control. He was being led ever onwards towards the centre of the city, and realised that whatever had him under its control — that Thompson character, he assumed — was sending him towards where the crowds would be.

But why? That was the question that kept rattling around inside his head, and he had no good answer — no good way of finding out, either, save for just letting this experience run its course. He didn’t even have sufficient control over himself to speak, so he was unable to ask Thompson before he left, and now there was no-one to ask, no-one to plead with, no way of crying out for help.

He rounded the corner onto the main street, and saw the shopping area ahead of him. Although it was early in the morning, people were already gathering, waiting for the shopping centre to open, milling around, laughing and talking with one another. They had no idea of the Darkness that crept among them.

Wilkins walked into the thick of the crowd, most people moving out of the way respectfully as they saw his uniform. When he was right in the middle of the throng of people, he stopped and did nothing. He just waited: one minute, two minutes, three minutes.

What was he waiting for? The conscious part of his mind found how still his body was standing to be somewhat eerie; he imagined the people milling around him probably felt somewhat similar. In his experience, the average member of the public was somewhat awkward around police officers; under normal circumstances, he’d have found it quite amusing, but today, he felt that their unease with him was more than a little justified.

The doors to the centre opened and people started piling in. There was some good-natured bumping and joshing, but things didn’t feel like they were out of control. Wilkins felt himself swept along in the tide of people, moving as part of the group as if it was a single living mass and he was just a cell that made up the organism as a whole.

As he entered the centre, he started to feel a change within his body. He felt an energy rising within him; it was warm, but unsettling. His head began to throb, and, blinking, he saw the world twist and shift before his eyes: what he knew as the “real” world shifting back and forth to the strange, dark world he’d caught a glimpse of before.

The energy continued to rise in him until he felt like he was going to explode. Then he did.

At least, it felt like it.

The energy was released from him in all directions in an explosive rush. Tangible darkness seemed to seep from every part of his body; black clouds billowing out all around him.

Some people gasped; others screamed; others still didn’t seem to notice at all. The dark miasma swirled around them and seemed to be absorbed right in to some of the people; as this happened, they stopped what they were doing, became quiet and glassy-eyed, and just waited.

The noise was terrible and indescribable. Then the pain came, and Wilkins found himself suddenly in control of his body again as the dark energy continued to emanate from him. He sank to his knees, letting out a scream — the first noise he’d been able to make of his own free will for what felt like years — and collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

The dark miasma gradually stopped swirling and faded from sight. Those who had been touched by it and rooted to the spot found themselves able to move again, with no memory of what had happened before. Those who had witnessed the curious happenings suddenly found themselves unconvinced that they had really seen what they thought they had seen, and then they shrugged, went about their business and left Wilkins just lying on the ground, forgotten.

“Well, that went better than I expected,” said the shadowy figure to Magnus. They had been standing nearby, watching the whole thing. Magnus didn’t understand what was happening, but he felt that it probably wasn’t a good thing. Given the frightening power on display, however, he thought better of acting immediately; he felt he needed to understand the situation a little better first. So he took the direct approach.

“What just happened?” he asked. The shadowy figure laughed.

“Well,” she said. “You could maybe think of it as a… recruitment drive.”

“Recruitment?” he asked. She did not elaborate. He felt he would probably find out soon — and that it probably related to the strange feeling of something being amiss that he had felt a short while ago.

[Back to the start.]

---

 

Dora was miserable. She didn’t think she’d ever been so miserable, and the last person she would have expected to cause such misery would be someone claiming to represent the “Light” and the “greater good” in the world.

But here she was. She wasn’t bound and she wasn’t a prisoner but she might as well have been: the golden figure had made it abundantly clear that he had a lot of plans for her, and that to go against his will would be a very bad idea indeed.

And so here she was, still holed up in the abandoned church, which appeared to be her companion’s main base of operations, although he didn’t appear to have any “staff” as such. It appeared to be a solitary operation, or at least it had been until she had come along.

She was still unsure of his endgame. He kept mentioning the “greater good” and “saving” people from the “Darkness”, but she still didn’t really know what that meant outside of what she had already seen from Magnus. Was she the only other representative of “Light”? Was Magnus, for that matter, the only other representative of “Dark”? Why, for that matter, were they fighting? It all seemed so neat, tidy and utterly clichéd that were the evidence not all around her, she wouldn’t have believed any of this were possible for a moment.

She wasn’t sure how many days had passed since she had been brought here, but she felt like it had been several. Oddly, she didn’t feel at all tired or hungry despite not having slept or eaten; the light within her seemed to sustain and feed her at all times.

What a boring existence, she thought, pondering a life sustained only by the light. Imagine a world without cake, or chocolate, or pie. How awful that must be.

Over the course of her captivity, she had come to learn a little more about the powers she seemingly had. She could fly, much like her companion, and she could move at superhuman speed — the latter she already knew, of course, following her strange experience shortly after all this had begun. But she also had more subtle powers: powers to break and to mend; powers to manipulate both matter and the mind. She hadn’t had the opportunity to try the latter as yet, but she could feel the capability within herself; she wasn’t in any hurry to find out, however, particularly as she vividly recalled how the golden figure — clearly magnitudes of power stronger than her — had forced her to do things as a demonstration of both his power and what she might be capable of. She hadn’t enjoyed the demonstrations.

Under less oppressive circumstances, she might have enjoyed learning about and discovering her new powers, but she knew that she’d never have the freedom to explore them fully, as the golden figure was never far away, and as he’d said to her, she would not be able to just use the Light as she saw fit. She had to think of the greater good, whatever that was, and whoever defined it.

“Soon,” said the golden figure suddenly after a long period of silence. Dora hated those long periods of silence, as they made her feel more lonely than ever. The golden figure wasn’t someone she could just talk to, after all; he seemed to have no interest whatsoever in her as a person, caring only for whatever his eventual goal was.

“Soon,” he said again, turning to her. “The time is almost right. Then you’ll see. The world will see. The world will understand. The world will come to know the Light.”

“How?” she cried, throwing up her hands in frustration. It wasn’t the first time she had asked this question, because it wasn’t the first time the golden figure had given a similar speech. Today felt a little different, however: there was more… she wasn’t sure if she wanted to say emotion in the speech, but there was certainly a noticeably greater intensity about it.

“The world shall be bathed in a cleansing Light,” he said, sounding like an increasingly excited preacher. “All who are touched by it shall be judged. And the righteous shall rule at our side, and the corrupted shall bow down to us and serve us. The world will be a better place, for the greater good.”

He turned away from her and faced the sanctuary of the church.

“It begins… now.”

The figure clenched its fists, and Dora became dimly aware of what appeared to be a low rumbling sound. She couldn’t tell what it was initially, but then she felt the ground begin to shake beneath her feet; a slight vibration at first, a sensation that brought unprompted to her mind the memory of her student flat where the washing machine that belonged to the people downstairs used to make her floor vibrate.

But then it grew, and it was no longer the odd, unexpected source of a memory: it was frightening. The intensity of the tremors grew and grew and grew, and Dora was sure she could feel the very earth shifting beneath her feet. The floor of the church remained intact, though, even as the shaking caused empty candlesticks to fall over and roll down the aisle, vases of long-dead plants to fall from their pedestals and shatter on the floor, and the long-dormant, powerless light fittings in the ceiling to swing violently from side to side.

Oddly, the many candles which had flared to life at the golden figure’s command when they had first arrived remained solidly and stubbornly where they had always been, defying the laws of physics — though by now, Dora thought with grim amusement, this was nothing new to her.

“Come,” said the golden figure, apparently unperturbed by the violent shaking of the earth and extending his hand to Dora in an uncharacteristic symbol of cooperation. She pointedly refused to take his hand, but did follow him as he started to walk down the aisle towards the large front doors of the church.

“Behold,” he said dramatically as he opened the doors. She walked up to the opening, feeling the cool breeze coming in and stirring up the air for what felt like the first time in years.

She had expected to see something peculiar when she peered out of the doors, but she hadn’t been quite ready for this.

The church was no longer where it had been, sat in the depths of forgotten countryside. Instead, it now sat atop a huge golden spire that glowed with the same radiance as the golden figure and, indeed, at times, herself. It illuminated the surrounding area for what looked like miles, making the night almost as bright as day.

She stepped out of the door and onto the surface of the golden spire; there was a good few feet between the church doorway and the unprotected edge, so she got as close as she dared and looked down.

The spire was a long way up; she didn’t feel she could accurately judge the altitude, but she knew that a fall from here for a normal person would be immediately fatal and probably extremely messy. She started to feel dizzy as she gazed down at the ground far below the spire, so she quickly stepped back from the edge and back into the church doorway.

“It begins,” the golden figure said again. “And now we have work to do.”

 

*       *       *       *        *

Magnus felt something amiss the moment it happened, even though he was preoccupied.

A terrified Wilkins gazed up at him, saying nothing. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was incapable of saying anything.

Magnus had not seen himself in a mirror for a while now, and he indeed cut an imposing, intimidating, even terrifying figure. His features were twisted by the darkness that flowed through him, and as his powers had grown he had begun to emanate what appeared to be a dark miasma. And, as he had grown in strength, he had become less able to shut his powers off and appear “normal”. The shadowy figure had described this phenomenon as the Embrace: allowing the Darkness into his body and mind so completely that he was becoming one with it.

Magnus found himself surprised at how unafraid he was with this situation. He welcomed the Darkness; it had been a friend to him when he had no-one else, and now it was rewarding him with these powers.

But how was he supposed to use them? Why was he here, really? The shadowy figure had told him to protect Wilkins, but there had been no sign of any threats to his wellbeing — although Wilkins clearly interpreted Magnus’ presence as a threat to his wellbeing.

That is, there had been no sign of any threats until now. He couldn’t tell what was different — what was wrong — but he knew as soon as it had happened. And he knew that bad times were coming.

He looked Wilkins in the eyes and frowned. The world seemed to bend and shift around the two of them, and Wilkins gave a low groan, slumping back in his chair as he did so. His head lolled back limply as he groaned and moaned again, then it rolled forwards again. Then Wilkins looked up at Magnus, this time with a blank, glassy stare, all trace of the previous terror gone.

“Master,” he said.

Now it was Magnus’ turn to be terrified. Had he done this? He hadn’t meant to. What did it mean? How did he undo it? Should he undo it?

“Shit,” he said to himself. “Did I mess this up?”

“No,” said the shadowy figure, stepping out of a nearby wall. “No, you’re doing just fine.”

She clapped her hands once, twice, three times; a slow, sarcastic clap. Magnus had the feeling that he was being played, but he couldn’t tell how. He had trusted the shadowy figure up until this point, but he was starting to have second thoughts. Who was she? What did she want with him? And why had he, of all the people in the world, been chosen for… whatever task she had in mind for him?

[Back to the start.]

---

 

Several days passed. Wilkins had not gone back into work the day after his strange encounter; he had not gone back to work at all since, in fact. So concerned was he for his own mental wellbeing — seeing things that clearly could not be true was probably, after all, a sign that something was very wrong indeed — that he’d taken himself straight to his doctor and demanded to be signed off work with stress.

As he sat in his bed, staring at the wall, he wasn’t sure that taking himself out of situations involving other human beings had been quite the right thing to do. He found himself alone with his thoughts, and his thoughts, it turned out, weren’t overly friendly. They seemingly wanted him to suffer, to recall bad things that had happened in the past — and to worry about bad things happening in the present. He knew that even as he sat there, motionless, the enquiry into the disappearance of Thompson would be doing its best to trawl up any evidence of negligence on the part of Wilkins, and Wilkins knew full well that there was plenty of it, given his general feeling of detachment and disillusionment that he’d been feeling recently.

He’d lost count of the days since he’d last been in to work; he reckoned maybe a week or more. His house had been well-stocked with food and other supplies, though, so he hadn’t needed to leave once, and so he hadn’t. Now, though, he was starting to get down to the food at the back of the cupboard — things that had been bought and forgotten about months, even years ago, but which were designed to see people through an apocalypse with at least a bare minimum of nutrition.

He got up and walked to his kitchen, boiled the kettle and prepared a cup full of noodles for himself. The smell that emanated from the mug was less than appetising, but at least it was something to eat, and Wilkins had found, ever since delving into the food at the back of the cupboard, that the artificial flavourings in these instant “meal in a pouch” things were surprisingly tasty and satisfying, at least in the short term; he felt hungry less than an hour later, in most cases, but at least they provided something to do, if nothing else.

He hadn’t had a repeat of the encounter in his bedroom since it had happened, and he struggled to understand its implications. Who was the strange, shadowy figure? What happened to his room? What did it all mean? Was it real, or was it just a manifestation of the pressure his brain was feeling at the moment?

It wouldn’t be long before he’d get an answer.

 

*       *       *       *       *

Magnus deftly hopped from rooftop to rooftop noiselessly, breaking his fall each time with wings of darkness. He’d been surprised and delighted at how quickly he’d come to understand the peculiar changes that had come across him, and he was starting to enjoy using them. The shadowy figure, which occasionally showed up and suggested that he maybe try doing things a little bit differently, had helped him on his path, but for the most part he had explored his capabilities for himself and come to realise that he was, in human terms, virtually indestructible and capable of numerous physics-defying feats.

The strange black tendrils that could now erupt from his hands to order proved to be his most versatile assets. In just the last few days, he’d used them to climb up a seemingly unscalable wall, to give a mugger — and, for that matter, his victim — the fright of his life, and as a somewhat self-satisfied demonstration to the shadowy figure one evening, to retrieve a coffee cup from the kitchen without leaving his seat.

One thing had bothered Magnus initially. Although his new powers were exciting — not to mention a little bit frightening — they did have one impact on his life that he wasn’t sure what to make of: they served to distance himself further from normal existence. There was no way around this, of course, and he knew this: there is no way that one can become capable of superhuman leaps between buildings, physics-defying stunts and the ability to summon dark tendrils to do one’s bidding and in any way hope that one’s life would remain in any way “normal”. But still it bothered him a little, at least to begin with: as time passed and he grew more confident with each of his strange powers, however, it started to bother him less and less; he started to realise that his “normal” existence was nothing but a dark and miserable place where very few people cared about him — Dora being the obvious exception — whereas now, now he had the ability to make a difference, both for good and for ill: his powers gave him the ability to both help and hurt, and, in an attempt to understand the situation better — and at the urging of the shadowy figure — he had done both of these things.

Both the “helping” and the “hurting” had come in the aforementioned case of the mugger. Magnus had been out practising his ability to leap and float between rooftops when he had spotted the unfolding situation in a darkened alley he was familiar with from a few years back: although unlit and rather frightening to walk through late at night, it was a popular thoroughfare for student revellers returning from an evening’s debauchery at a local nightclub: it was a quick, direct route between the street which housed both the nightclub and a fine selection of questionable kebab shops, and the main student residential area in the city. Because of its popularity and usual level of activity, it remained surprisingly free of crime; certainly during Magnus’ time as a student, he’d never known of anyone getting attacked there. The girl had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

She’d been walking home slightly unsteadily; she was tipsy, but not falling-down drunk. She was, however, alone; a disagreement with her friends earlier in the evening had seen her storm off in anger, desiring nothing more than to get back home to her nice warm bed and forget about the silly things alcohol makes people do. A lone, vulnerable girl had proven too tempting a target to resist for her assailant, who had been casually walking back and forth around the area, up and down the alleyway, for the past hour or two. So unremarkable a figure he cut that no-one had paid him any mind; most people passing through the area were on their way somewhere, so had no way of knowing that he had been loitering with intent. But he had.

He’d followed the girl in the alleyway and struck quickly, grabbing her from behind and covering her mouth, threatening her not to scream. Then he shoved her violently against a wall and drew a pocket knife. She couldn’t have screamed even if she did think it was a good idea; she was too terrified to even move, let alone make a sound.

Magnus saw all of this, as did the shadowy figure, who had been accompanying him. She urged him on to intervene, to test out his powers and the way in which he should respond to a situation. She encouraged him not to think, just to feel, and to do what felt most natural, to do what his instincts told him to.

Magnus had leapt down into the alleyway, floating noiselessly to the ground a short distance from the confrontation. The lack of lighting in the alleyway meant that his entrance had gone unnoticed; the pair were still far too preoccupied with their own situation.

Before he could let himself think about what was the “right” thing to do, Magnus caused the black tendrils to erupt from his hands, and they charged through the night air until they ensnared the girl’s assailant. They wrapped around his legs and around his body, binding him like a constrictor snake traps its prey, and slowly started to squeeze the life out of the mugger. Gasping for breath, his face going pale, the mugger attempted in vain to remove the tendrils from around his body, but they were far too tight, and touching them gave him an indescribable sensation of terror that he had no desire to repeat ever again.

He knew that he was going to die; he resigned himself to it. Magnus felt it, and he knew he had to make a choice, quickly. Without hesitation, he retracted the tendrils, which reversed their course and coiled back into his hands — rather like a vacuum cleaner cord retracting, Magnus thought with detached amusement — to leave the breathless mugger collapsing to his knees, gasping for sweet, sweet air.

The girl, meanwhile, who had been frozen to the spot during this otherworldly display, came to her senses enough to realise that this would be a good opportunity to run far, far away and, perhaps, to never, ever come out from under the covers again.

Tonight, Magnus had come across no such incidents that required his intervention, but he knew now that if he did, he would not hesitate to step in. He had, in his lifetime, read enough superhero comics to know that he needed to use his power responsibly, but he figured that no-one would really object to a few more muggers being taken out of commission.

He wasn’t on the hunt for crime tonight, though; he had a greater purpose in mind. The shadowy figure had earlier explained to him the situation of Officer Wilkins, who appeared to be teetering on the cusp of the Darkness. It was Magnus’ job to keep him safe and ensure the Light didn’t get to him first; it was Magnus’ job to ensure that Wilkins didn’t end up as another Stacey Barman.

When he thought of the Light, he couldn’t help but think of Dora. He hadn’t seen her for several days; hadn’t even heard from her. Simple, normal things like text messages and phone calls seemed to mundane in the context of his new existence, but he still found himself missing her and worrying about the plans the golden figure had for her; he found himself worrying that they’d end up in a confrontation with one another, and that one would end up having to hurt the other — something that he knew neither of them wanted to do, despite the opposing sides on which they’d found themselves in this otherworldly conflict.

He couldn’t get hung up on that now, though; he had more important things to do. He was approaching Wilkins’ home — the shadowy figure had known right away where to send Magnus, much to his surprise — and he had a job to do. He hoped that it would be a boring and uneventful job, but he had the sneaking suspicion that, going by the pattern of recent happenings, things were probably not going to be that simple at all.

And he would, it transpired, be right about that.

[Back to the start.]

---

 

Officer James Wilkins slumped back into his sofa and flicked the television on. He hopped through the channels, but as usual, there was nothing interesting to watch; he just wanted some background noise. He eventually settled on some sort of cookery challenge show; it seemed to run with the theme that “celebrities” were not, on average, particularly good at cooking, with some of them even struggling to throw together a convincing omelette.

It had not been a good day. The escape of the suspect Magnus Thompson had raised more than a few eyebrows, particularly as Wilkins had already submitted his report stating that he intended to release him. Thompson apparently still feeling the need to escape despite the fact that he had seemingly been telling the truth in his interviews suggested to Wilkins, Jensen and their superiors that there was perhaps something more to the situation than there had initially appeared; it certainly looked suspicious, anyway.

A big question hung over the case: how on Earth had he done it? The next morning, his cell was empty, but it was locked up just as tight as it had been the previous evening, and there was no evidence that anyone had forced entry — or, indeed, exit. It was simply as if he had never been in there at all, though the paper trail said otherwise, of course. Thompson had been processed just like any other suspect, and there was both written and recorded evidence of his time in the police station; there was just no sign of him whatsoever.

Wilkins sighed and closed his eyes, the dull murmuring of the TV show proving a relaxing backdrop.

He was roused from his almost-slumber by the “ding!” of the bell on the microwave, indicating that his meal for one was ready. He sighed again, pushed himself up out of the soft sofa, which had been threatening to swallow him, and walked through to the kitchen. He emptied the unappetising-looking pasta bake into his last remaining clean bowl, quickly wiped off a fork that was in the sink and took it back into the living room to eat in front of the TV, as was his custom these days.

His heart wasn’t really in anything these days. He had once enjoyed his work as a police officer, but nowadays it felt hollow and empty, more like he was enforcing rules for the sake of enforcing them rather than to help make society in any way better. He had actually been excited — and slightly sickened at this admission to himself — to find himself investigating something more interesting than yet another crowd of youths standing on a street corner saying “fuck” a little too loudly for the taste of an old lady who lived close by, or a shoplifting incident whose value added up to less than the price of a packet of cigarettes.

Now, though, this case was proving to be just as troublesome as everything else in his life. The escape of Thompson had, of course, been blamed on him, since he was the last officer to deal with him. There was to be “an enquiry” — the station seemed to launch a thousand of these daily — and he had, for the moment, been temporarily removed from the case pending its findings. He knew that by the time the “enquiry” had finished chewing through the reams of red tape that sustained it, Thompson would be long gone, Barman’s body would be in the ground and there would be little hope of ever finding out what the truth really was.

He finished his pasta as the cookery show finished. He put the bowl on the floor and leaned his head back on the sofa, closing his eyes once again. It didn’t take him long to drift off to sleep.

 

*       *       *       *       *

When he awoke, the sun had gone down. The TV was still on; now it seemed to be showing some sort of outdoor survival program, and as Wilkins’ eyes came back into focus he was treated to the sight of the presenter gobbling down some sort of beetle-like creature. Wishing he hadn’t woken up at that exact moment and wincing, he fumbled around for the remote and flicked the screen off. The room filled with darkness, and he just lay there for a moment, contemplating the silence.

Then he started to think, and he didn’t want to do that right now, so he forced himself to stand up, letting out a grunting moan as he did so — he’d been on his feet all day, and his legs were feeling very stiff — and shuffling towards the stairs, intending to head upstairs to bed.

The house was all too quiet now, and far too big for him to live in by himself. This was why he spent the majority of his time when he wasn’t working in the living room watching television; it distracted him and kept his mind busy, and prevented him from thinking about why the house was so quiet.

He trudged up the stairs one at a time, pulled off his clothes and got into bed, closing his eyes right away.

“You want to talk about it?” came a voice he’d heard once or twice before. It was soft, feminine, soothing. He knew it wasn’t really there, but it brought him comfort nonetheless. He said nothing.

“Uh-huh,” said the female voice. “It’s been a bad day, I know. And I bet you’re thinking that things probably can’t get much worse right now, can they?”

His continued his silence.

“Well,” said the voice. “What if I told you that the man you’re looking for can help you out?”

He opened his eyes and sat up groggily. He blinked a few times, then gave a start. A shadowy female figure seemed to be straddling him, but he felt no weight whatsoever from the figure; she seemed to be completely incorporeal, as if she was made from dark mist. But she was most definitely there; he could see her moving and hear her talking.

As he looked at her, the walls of his room seemed to bend and shift around him; must be my eyes adjusting to the dark, he thought.

Then he considered the strangeness of the situation. There was no way there could be a black, shadowy figure made of mist straddling him, but there seemingly was, so perhaps his walls really were bending and shifting, too?

He reached over to the bedside lamp and tried to switch it on. Nothing happened. The figure did not move, but as his eyes continued to adjust to the darkness — he was at least partly right about what he was experiencing — he started to feel like he could make out things that had not been there before; his walls seemed to be covered in black, scrawled writing: words, phrases, short poems and indecipherable symbols. Everywhere he looked, he saw the strange designs; he didn’t know what they were, and they were frightening. But he could not scream; he found himself strangely fascinated, despite the adrenaline of terror rattling around his body.

“What’s going on?” he asked in a cracked voice.

“Oh, this?” said the figure, moving off him and gesturing flamboyantly around the room. “It’s probably a little early to start getting into the details of it all, but rest assured, all will become very clear very soon indeed. I’m glad that you’ve seen it, though; that tells me something important that I needed to know. See you soon.”

The figure vanished, the room seemed to distort again and suddenly Wilkins was dazzled by the light from his lamp, which apparently he had managed to turn on at some point.

He looked around, his heart racing. His walls were clean, albeit shabby, with the wallpaper peeling here and there, but there was no sign of the strange black scrawl that had been there moments earlier. This was, he was sure, the room he knew very well, but he didn’t feel quite so safe and cut off from the rest of the world here any more. Something seemed to be intruding on his sanctuary, and he didn’t like it.

Oh how pathetic they’d think I look if they could see me now, he said to himself as he pulled the covers up over his head and hid beneath them, leaving the light on. He closed his eyes and tried to get to sleep, but his mind kept whirling around a cycle of images like a hyperactive slideshow screensaver: first there was his darkened room as he’d seen it a moment ago, then there was Jensen, then Thompson’s empty cell, and then there was her face, just for a split second. Then the cycle repeated again, and again, and again.

Wilkins screwed up his face as if this would protect him from the mental assault his own imagination and memories were inflicting on him, but it was to no avail; still the images came, cycling around their sequence faster and faster and faster until, eventually, his exhausted body succumbed to sleep.

The assault continued in his dreams, but this time instead of still images he was reliving those moments. In each instance, he tried as hard as he could to escape, to run away from the things he was seeing, but everywhere he turned, the world seemed to turn with him; he could not get away.

He could just about deal with the simpler images. But then he came to the last situation again, and it was painfully vivid in its detail; he walked up to the gurney with that cold, grey, still body on it, looked up at the medical examiner, nodded his mute agreement that the body was indeed who it was thought she was, and then he found himself just staring down at her face, beautiful even in death, even battered and broken and bloodied as it was. She was still beautiful.

His eyes snapped open and he realised he was covered in sweat and breathing rapidly.

There would be no more sleep tonight.

[Back to the start.]

---

They were flying.

Dora knew that she was in a bad situation, and worried about Magnus, but she couldn’t help enjoying the exhilarating experience. The golden figure — whom she had by now met several times before, but was quickly coming to dislike intensely — had snatched her up before she had realised what was going on, and was now carrying her under his arm like a cheap flatscreen TV scored in the January sales; a gift to be taken home as quickly as possible; a prize.

She was insulted by the implications of the way she was being carried, but also knew that were it not for her being carried like this, she might not be able to experience the euphoria of physics-defying flight she was enjoying right now. She felt pulled in two different directions at once; she hated the golden figure for the way he had behaved, but she loved him for the things he was letting her discover.

She had lost track of how long they had been flying or even how far they had travelled; the ground beneath them had flashed by in a blur, and she hadn’t been able to make out where they had headed. Abruptly, the flight came to a stop, however; the golden figure slowed and stopped above what appeared to be a country church, then gently lowered himself and his prize to the ground. When his feet touched the ground, he released Dora from beneath his arm, allowing her to stand on her own two feet. She staggered unsteadily; it felt strange both to be on terra firma again, and also to no longer be travelling as fast as they had been.

“Whoa there,” said the golden figure. “Take a minute to get your balance back.”

Dora frowned. She couldn’t understand this bizarre character; as she’d been snatched up, she’d felt like she was being kidnapped, but now he was concerned about her wellbeing? He wasn’t restraining her or holding her against her will? What was the deal with him?

Of course, he might as well have been restraining her or holding her against her will, since she had absolutely no idea where they had flown to. She didn’t recognise the church, and it appeared to be somewhere in the countryside well outside the city. It was a peaceful, relaxing environment; there wasn’t a trace of the perpetual background traffic noise that was everywhere in the city, and instead the only sounds that could be heard were the rustling of the leaves in the gentle breeze and the occasional hooting of an owl somewhere in the distance.

“Come in,” the figure said, approaching the church door and gesturing for her to follow. She hesitated a moment, then followed.

Inside, it was clear that the church wasn’t in active use, but it hadn’t yet crossed the line into “ruined” territory. It was still fully intact, just abandoned. Rows of pews were covered in a thick layer of dust, sad old candles sitting atop the detachable candlesticks every other row; faded hassocks adorned the backrests of each row. Images of sacred figures gazed down from the stained-glass windows, and the crucified form of Jesus gazed down from his cross that formed the centrepiece of the rood screen dividing the nave from the chancel. It would have been an attractive, quaint little village church had it been in more active use; now, though, it seemed slightly eerie.

“Let there be light!” bellowed the golden figure with exaggerated theatricalism. Instantly, every candle in the church — many of which clearly had not been lit for years — flared to life, filling the church with flickering orange light. It was a spectacular sight, and the golden figure clearly enjoyed every moment of it. Dora couldn’t help but be impressed despite her intense dislike of her companion.

“Sorry,” he said slyly, turning to her and shrugging. She couldn’t see his face, but she could imagine what expression it would have been pulling if she could. It wouldn’t be an expression of genuine remorse. “I just can’t resist doing that every time. Even when there’s no-one else here.”

“Okay,” she said absently, walking up the aisle. Her bare feet made little sound as she felt the cold tiles beneath them; she knew that if she had come here wearing her favourite shoes, however, that the clopping of the heels would have reverberated for several seconds inside the old building. She paused before the rood screen and gazed up at the crucifix for a moment, contemplating the son of God’s sad-looking face as he willingly submitted himself to his “punishment” and supposedly died for the world’s sins.

Dora had never really believed in religion, but then if anyone had told her that one night she would be swept away to the middle of nowhere by a radiant golden figure who could fly, she wouldn’t have believed them either. She found herself wondering what else was out there that she had taken for granted as not being true — or what strange and wonderful things there might be in the world that she had never even thought of once.

The church was silent for a moment. Then Dora turned from the screen and faced her companion.

“Why am I here?” she asked mildly. Her earlier exhilaration was giving way to irritability, but she did her best not to let that show; she could see from her companion’s encounter with Magnus that he was not someone to be trifled with, despite his apparently flippant attitude.

“You’re going to help me,” he said. He was confident in his statement, even though he hadn’t discussed it with her. This annoyed her further; she was her own person, and she didn’t exactly relish the thought of taking orders from this… was “person” even the right word?

“What makes you think I want to?” she said. Her facade of calm was quickly fading. “And what am I supposed to be helping you with?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “And we’ve already been through this.”

It was true: they had. Dora hadn’t given the full story to Magnus when they had compared stories shortly after their respective strange experiences had begun. While their experiences had been, for the most part, fairly similar, despite the opposition of the light and dark perspectives, there was one key way in which they had differed: what their apparent objectives were. Magnus had mentioned that his own strange companion figure had said something about the balance between the light and dark being thrown out; what Dora had not shared, meanwhile, was the fact that the golden figure standing before her right now had taken a somewhat different view of the situation: he had informed her that she was going to play a key role in wiping out and destroying the darkness completely and utterly.

“Think about it,” her companion continued. “Consider your shadowy friend we saw earlier — Marcus, was it?”

“Magnus,” she corrected him, though she had a feeling the error was deliberate rather than based on poor memory.

“Your friend is consumed by Darkness,” he continued, ignoring her comment. “Wouldn’t you like to help him? Wouldn’t you like to stop his pain? Haven’t you thought to yourself time after time that you want to save him?”

She said nothing. She couldn’t deny any of the things that her companion was saying, but she knew that his interpretation of them differed very much from her own, particularly if the sad case of Stacey Barman was anything to go by. She had little doubt in her mind that her companion genuinely did see his murder of Stacey Barman — for Magnus’ story had convinced her beyond question that the golden figure was responsible for the girl’s death — as “saving” her; as releasing her from pain.

That, in itself, was frightening, but what frightened her more was the dawning realisation that assumptions and associations she rarely had cause to consciously think about were being proven wrong every moment: she had always made the unconscious mental connection between the concept of “Light” and the concept of “Good”, but it was rapidly becoming clear to her that this most certainly was not the case, at least not if her companion was anything to go by. Similarly, despite Magnus’ embrace of — or at least being taken in by — the Darkness, did not make him an agent of “Evil”.

She knew him too well to think of him as evil. She knew him too well to believe that he could ever commit an evil act, even with his new powers: if he was truly evil, he would have wanted to exact revenge on the one who broke his heart, but instead, despite how deep into the darkness of despair that woman had sent him, he remained contemplative and accepted his own role in the way things had gone; he had taken responsibility for the things he had done as much as he had blamed her for the way in which she had handled things. She admired that, and wasn’t sure she could do the same thing, and yet she was the one who found herself infused with light and radiance?

“Well?” said her companion.

“I do,” she said defiantly. “But I’m going to do it my way.”

He laughed at her. Then he stopped abruptly.

“Oh, you’re serious,” he said gravely. “How adorable. I’m not sure you quite understand the situation. So let me put it in terms you might be able to comprehend.”

He walked slowly up the aisle towards her, his golden radiance seeming to grow as he did so. Although the sight was quite beautiful, she also found it spine-chilling. She didn’t know what was going to happen next, but it wasn’t long before she found out.

“Kneel,” he said, pointing to her. She complied immediately.

“Grovel,” he said, his finger still pointing at her in an accusatory manner. She complied again, touching her head to the floor in a gesture of complete supplication.

“I don’t think you understand,” he said again. “You cannot just use the Light as you see fit. Everything we do is for the greater good. And you need to learn that. You need to learn to put aside selfish concerns and think of the greater good. You need to learn. Stand.”

She stood.

His arm still outstretched, her companion opened his hand, palm outwards towards her, and she felt herself lifting off the ground, her bare feet no longer touching the cold, chipped tiles of the old church’s floor. She was flying, floating, completely out of control of her own body. She floated until she felt something digging into her back, and realised that she had been pushed up against the rood screen; the sharp thing in her back was, presumably, the crucifix she had contemplated earlier. Now she was the one in the submissive position, but she didn’t feel like her sacrifice, unwilling as it was, was going to achieve anything.

Nor, it seemed, did her companion. He clenched his fist and pulled back his elbow. As if yanked by invisible chains, she was pulled to the ground, her whole body slamming to the ground with great force.

Such was the shock of the sudden movement that it took several seconds for the pain to register. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere in her body; she couldn’t move; she felt like all her bones had been broken. The agony was so much that she felt like she would pass out — then, as quickly as it had come, the pain was gone again, and she found herself being helped to her feet.

Surprised that she could stand and tears still falling from the corner of her eyes from the agony of just a moment ago, she looked at her assailant, who just nodded.

No, she thought. Light was not Good at all.

[Back to the start.]

---

 

He wasn’t sure where else to go.

He hadn’t immediately decided to head for Dora’s house; he’d just picked a direction and started running. But it wasn’t long before he realised that he’d naturally picked that direction, and it seemed as good a place as any to go.

Quickly he found himself surprised at his own stamina; although he’d occasionally made an effort to try and get some exercise, he still considered himself massively unfit, but tonight was different: he didn’t feel the slightest bit out of breath, even after running up the big hill which the police station was at the bottom of, nor did his muscles ache.

Shortly after this thought, he realised that he was moving a lot more quickly than he should have been able to, much to the surprise of the drunken vagrant lying propped up against a crumbling brick wall outside the train station. As Magnus swept past, the vagrant was knocked onto his side, his paper bag-clad bottle of cheap cider skittering away as it fell from his hand; the golden nectar that helped him forget life’s troubles dribbling on to the street and down a nearby drain. He did not move to reclaim it; indeed, although he did not know it right now, his last mouthful this evening would turn out to be the last drop of alcohol he ever touched.

Magnus did not concern himself with his surroundings, nor with what anyone who might see him streaking through the city streets at an improbable velocity might think. He simply headed for his destination, following the route he would have taken were he driving his car; his mind strangely clear and focused. This didn’t feel the same as when the primal instinct had taken over shortly after he’d discovered Stacey Barman’s body; he felt in control, this time; he felt powerful.

But he also felt afraid. It was a dull feeling pushed to the back of his mind by his determination to reach his destination as quickly as possible, but it was there nonetheless. What he was doing should have been completely, physically impossible, but the wind whipping his hair and biting at the skin on his face certainly felt real.

The city streets seemed deserted as they flashed past in a blur. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but he guessed it must have been late — or early. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed between him being locked in the cell and his strange, unexplainable escape, but he guessed it must have been a few hours at least. Night had already fallen when the officers finished questioning him — they would probably have a few more for him now, if they ever saw him again, that is — and the hour had gotten sufficiently late for the lights to go out, after all.

It didn’t matter. He needed to get to Dora. He wasn’t sure what he’d do when he reached her, but right now she felt like the only person who could help him deal with the situation, so ever onwards he ran, until he found himself coming into her familiar street. He slowed and eventually stopped in front of her house, unsure of how to announce his presence. He didn’t have his phone with him, after all, and he didn’t want to raise a commotion if the hour was as late as he thought it probably was.

It turned out he didn’t need to worry. Not long after he arrived outside her house, Dora’s front door opened, she stepped out and slowly began to walk towards him. Almost imperceptibly at first, she began to glow; as she approached, with each step the radiance seemed to grow within her until her features were all but obscured, and Magnus was reminded, with a certain degree of horror, of the golden figure he had chased away from Stacey Barman’s murder scene.

A dark thought entered his mind, but he pushed it out; he knew that Dora hadn’t done this, because Stacey Barman’s assailant had been, as closely as he could tell, male. Although the brightness of the light emanating from Dora was almost blinding at this point, her form was still recognisably female; although she was still wearing her night clothes, the light bursting forth from her made her figure clearly visible through the material. Magnus’ heart ached as he gazed upon the literally radiant figure of the woman he could never have.

“Hi,” she said, her voice eerily calm; almost devoid of emotion.

“Hi,” he said, equally coldly.

The two just stared at one another for a moment. Silence reigned around them; time seemed to stand still. The world seemed to bend and shift, but it neither became the dark, twisted world that Magnus had come to recognise, and nor did it become the bright but chilling world Dora had come to know. It simply seemed to wobble in a state of not-quite-reality, but neither of the two took their eyes from the other.

Magnus was the first to move. He extended his right arm in front of him; he was unsurprised to notice that it had taken on the battered, gnarled, darkened appearance he had previously seen when his strange powers had previously manifested. The fear was still there in the back of his mind, but he was coming to recognise this strange phenomenon now; it was part of him, whether he liked it or not, so he was going to have to come to accept it.

After a moment, Dora reached out with her right arm, too, her hand outstretched. She moved it slowly towards Magnus’ hand until the pair of them were almost touching, the tension between them almost palpable.

Then, a flash of golden light, and Magnus was knocked backwards with great force. He landed on his backside and was winded; the first time he had felt aware of his body’s physical limitations since the long run from the city centre. He looked up; standing in front of Dora was the same golden figure he’d seen before. It put its hands on its hips defiantly and looked down at him: the triumphant hunter gazing down at his cornered quarry right before he finished it off for good.

Neither the golden figure nor Magnus said anything, but Dora gave a shout of surprise as the former lunged at the latter, moving so quickly that he simply seemed to be in one place one moment, and another the next. Magnus, still on the ground, rolled out of the way to escape just in time, but he was still at a clear disadvantage, even with his staggered assailant.

The golden figure was angered by his unsuccessful attack and let out a howl of rage.

“Die!” he cried, obviously preparing to lunge again. But this time, Magnus was ready. The tendrils erupted from his hands again; one swept the golden figure’s legs out from beneath him, and another knocked him aside, sending him skittering across the street as if he weighed no more than a cardboard box.

Magnus leapt to his feet with agility that surprised himself and turned to face his floored opponent, the situation now reversed from what it had been a moment ago. But the disparity didn’t last for long; his attacker rolled backwards and nimbly leapt to his feet, clearly undeterred by how his quarry was proving to be something of a feisty one.

The golden figure swept towards Magnus at lightning velocity once again; once again, Magnus deftly sidestepped, but missed with the dark tendrils this time. The attack came again; his assailant was nothing if not predictable. And again, and again; every time, Magnus dodged the assault, the pair of them indulging in a peculiar dance as Dora looked on.

But Magnus didn’t realise that the golden figure very much had a set of steps in mind for the pair of them until it was much too late; with his last lunge he didn’t aim for Magnus at all, and instead snatched up Dora’s surprised figure, still glowing with an intense radiance, and streaked off into the distance with a chilling laugh.

Magnus was left standing alone. The world, which had been shimmering between light and dark moments ago, began to fade out, and as he sank to his knees all trace of the light and vibrance that had been here a moment ago was gone, and he was once again surrounded by the despairing words and scrawled symbols that seemed to cover every surface.

Was he destined to be alone? Was this how it was always going to be? Was this what the conflict between light and dark really meant?

He didn’t know. But he knew that he had to find out — and that even if Dora was, it seemed, on the opposite “side” to him, he had to help her.

“Good,” came the now-familiar voice of the shadowy figure as it appeared from nothingness beside him. “I see you’re starting to get it.”

[Back to the start.]

---

 

When the following morning came, Magnus was startled awake by a hammering on his flat’s front door. It was an urgent, persistent hammering; whoever was doing it clearly wanted to come in right now.

He groaned and unsteadily pushed himself to his feet. He had all but passed out where he had fallen the previous night; he was still wearing the same clothes, and the crumpled bedsheets left an obvious outline of where he had slept. His mind was not fully alert as yet, but he knew two things: he was in a lot of pain, and he very much wanted that noise to stop.

Yawning, groaning and rubbing his face, he staggered to the front door pulled it open a crack without looking through the peephole first. He poked his head around the gap in the door, but kept the rest of his body in the warmth and safety of his home.

“What?” he said, his vision still blurred.

“Mr Magnus Thompson?” said the police officer standing in the hallway; a stocky, stern-faced man with a neatly-trimmed goatee beard. He was accompanied by a female police officer built almost as solidly as he was. Radio chatter burbled in the background, but was indecipherable.

“Yes,” said Magnus, blinking the sleep out of his eyes, not fully registering what was going on.

“We were hoping to talk to you about the death of Stacey Barman,” he said. “You are the one who reported it, correct?”

Magnus suddenly felt very awake, a rush of adrenaline shooting through him like an electric shock. How did they know?

“The number the one who reported the crime called from was registered to this address,” said the female officer, speaking up for the first time. “It was you who called, yes?” she said, echoing her colleague’s words.

“Yes,” said Magnus in a low voice. “I reported it.”

“May we come in?” said the male officer gruffly. Magnus got the impression that despite the polite language, it was not a polite request. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“You’re not in trouble, don’t worry,” said the female officer. Magnus would have smiled at the obvious and clichéd good cop-bad cop routine were it not proving to be one of the more stressful experiences he had lived through to date. “We just want to get a better idea of what might have happened, what you might have seen.”

“Okay,” said Magnus. He stepped out from behind the door and pulled it open fully. He realised too late that the shirt and jeans he had been wearing since last night — the shirt and jeans he hadn’t changed when he had got up in a hurry not five minutes ago — were both streaked with smears of dried blood.

 

*       *       *       *       *

Dora looked uneasily at the disheveled figure of Magnus visible through the glass, the guard standing mute and still as a statue behind him. She lifted the receiver. Magnus did the same.

“Hi,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”

Dora had been the person he called when they had brought him in under suspicion of the murder of Stacey Barman. He wasn’t thinking straight and didn’t know any lawyers, so she was the only person he could think to call. The offers who had brought him in — the man was named Wilkins and the woman was named Jensen — had allowed him to obtain the number from his phone, but the device itself had then been confiscated along with the few other personal belongings he had in his pockets.

Dora didn’t know what to make of the situation. She didn’t believe for a second that Magnus was capable of murdering anyone, but she was also fully aware of the strange happenings that had been occurring recently — and was certain that if her own strange experience she had had on the way home the previous night was anything to go by, Magnus was probably also in a peculiar situation where he needed to quickly learn how to control an enormous power he didn’t understand.

It had happened unexpectedly as she was walking back to her car; a curious urge to run. She obliged the sudden instinct, surprising herself, but quickly found that the instinct was stronger than her conscious, self-aware mind: before long, she felt like she was out of control. She ran, rapidly speeding up until she had reached a velocity that should have been physically impossible for even the most well-trained athletes. She became dimly aware that she was heading straight for a solid-looking wall, and then the world was turned on its side as she simply charged up the side of the building as if it was a flat piece of flooring. Then she was atop the roofs of the city; she bounced and leapt from building to building, feeling an odd — and slightly frightening — sense of euphoria as she did so. It was an addictive, intoxicating feeling; initially, she didn’t want it to stop, but as what little remained of her rational mind started to panic over the lack of control over her own body she was exhibiting, she wanted nothing more than to be back on solid ground.

And then she was; walking down the street where she had been before she had started running. Had she imagined it? A daydream? A hallucination? She wasn’t sure, but the strange, frightening experience caused her to stop, pinch herself and whisper under her breath “I’m here, everything’s fine, everything’s fine,” without caring if anyone around her heard.

“Hi,” she said.

“I didn’t do it,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

The two gazed awkwardly at one another through the glass. All was silent for a moment, and Dora became very conscious of the ticking of the clock on the wall behind her. She glanced around and looked at it. They didn’t have long together.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked. “How can I help?”

“I don’t really know,” he said, his face clouded over with abject despair. “It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it.” He indicated his bloody clothes.

He had explained to her on the phone that he had discovered a dead body the previous night, and that due to an unfortunate series of circumstances was now under suspicion of putting it there. He hadn’t explained the rooftop fight against his golden assailant or his conversation with the shadowy figure, though he had little doubt, after their conversation, that she would believe him.

“Whatever it is that those… people said was going to happen,” he said, resting his chin on the palms of his hands, “it seems to be starting.”

She nodded mutely. She didn’t really know what to say about it. She didn’t understand what was happening to her, and what was happening to Magnus. But she knew that this wasn’t something she’d be able to just ignore and hope it would go away. She hadn’t chosen this path, but she was on it anyway, and so was Magnus. They just had to follow it and see where it went; she hoped, sincerely, that it didn’t simply lead to a life in prison for her friend.

Conscious of the guard standing behind him who, despite remaining stoic and statue-like throughout their conversation, was obviously listening in, Magnus refrained from giving a full account of his confrontation. If he got out of here, he resolved, he’d explain the situation fully. For now, however, he was just comforted by her presence; he felt more at ease than he had done all day.

A buzzer sounded, and the line between the receivers went dead. Magnus saw the door open behind Dora, and a police officer step in. Looking at Magnus for one last time with sadness in her eyes, she replaced the receiver and turned for the door. He watched her leave, waiting a moment before hanging up his own receiver and standing, following the guard back into the darkness.

*       *       *       *       *

Magnus was questioned by several police officers over the course of the rest of the day. By the time they had finished with him, night had fallen. He hoped that his answers had made it abundantly clear that he had no idea what had actually happened to Stacey Barman, and that the dried blood on his clothing was simply a result of him being near her and trying in vain to help her, but he didn’t get an answer as to whether or not he had done a good enough job that day. Even if he were to be released, it seemed, it wouldn’t be until tomorrow when the appropriate paperwork could be filled out. It looked like he’d be spending the night here, at least.

Eventually, the lights went out. He was the only occupant of the cells right now; although not a small town, crime had never been a big issue here. Between some ambitious and expensive youth projects and a close-knit community of residents who genuinely loved where they lived, faults and all, it was unusual to hear of even a robbery or mugging, let alone a murder case. Magnus was sure that what had happened to Stacey Barman would be all over the newspapers and Internet by the morning, if it wasn’t already.

He stared into the darkness, contemplating his situation miserably. If he’d thought things were bad before, they were even worse now. He seemed to be sinking ever further into his own personal pit of darkness; how could he escape?

Did he want to escape?

The thought surprised him for a moment, and then several things started to make a certain degree of sense.

Despite everything, he was enjoying the excitement in a perverse fashion. And he realised, with a combination of fascination, horror and satisfaction, that he had been enjoying the bleakness for a while before this had started happening, too. It made him feel important and special; it gave him something to talk about that made him feel like he mattered; a feeling which he had been sorely lacking for many years prior. He had been wilfully embracing his own darkness for a perverse sense of pleasure; it was a drug to him, and one that he couldn’t quit.

He blinked as his eyes started to adjust to the darkness, and was surprised to discover that he appeared to be standing on the other side of the bars to where he had been a moment earlier. He was outside his cell, which was still shut. He tried the door; it rattled slightly, but did not budge.

Was this another manifestation of his new power?

He found himself smiling to himself, even as his skin started to crawl at the prospect of explaining how this had happened should any police officer happen to see him. The adrenaline of both excitement and fear started to course through his veins as he walked towards the door; he reached out for it, but then paused before grasping the handle. It was probably locked anyway.

Instead, he closed his eyes and concentrated on immersing himself in the darkness that was all around him. He willed himself to become part of the night; to blend in; to disappear. He’d always been good at escaping people’s notice, after all, though not always intentionally.

When he opened his eyes again, he was standing on the city streets outside the police station.

However it had happened, however he had escaped, it wasn’t over yet. He needed to get away from here. Right now.

[Back to the start.]

---

 

His eyed darted one way then the other; his awareness heightened, his mind feeling more alert and agile than it had done for months.

He couldn’t see his quarry; it seemed that they were long gone… or were they?

He stood up straight and clasped his hands together in front of him. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He reached out with his mind and felt like his consciousness was separating from his body, scanning the area, searching, probing. Then his eyes snapped open, and it was back where it should be.

A flash of golden light. Or, more accurately, a streak. It raced towards him at such a velocity that he nearly didn’t have time to leap out of the way, but his heightened reflexes meant that by the time the golden swoosh had reached where his body was standing just a moment ago, he had already leapt high in the air and was gracefully floating down to face his assailant.

During all this, Magnus remained dimly aware of his own self, but at the same time felt as if he was trapped in his own body: his form a prison from which he could only look out and wonder how he could possibly ever perform such physics-defying feats. He could not find a rational explanation for it because there simply wasn’t one; whatever was happening was simply ignoring what he had, up until recently, considered the inviolable laws of the universe.

He landed on the rooftop softly; first one foot, then the other, and gazed across at his attacker, who was standing on the next building over, hands on hips in a confident expression of superiority, for it was a humanoid figure — or perhaps even a human figure. It was difficult to tell for sure, since the radiant golden glow that seemed to emanate from within the figure’s very skin made making any details out somewhat difficult, but he recognised the outline as a male form; trim, fit and tall, very different from the way he saw himself in his mind’s eye.

For a moment, he simply stared at the figure, and it stared back at him; a second later, there was another golden streak, and the figure was standing right in front of him. The golden radiance dazzled him, but he also noticed that the figure appeared to be casting no light on the rooftop beneath his feet; he was simply glowing in an otherworldly manner that, even in his detached state, Magnus found somewhat unsettling.

“Hi,” said the figure in a low voice. “I guess you’re not happy.” Magnus could, from this distance, barely make out a mocking smirk on the figure’s face.

“To put it mildly,” growled Magnus, the words coming out of his mouth before he was even aware what he was saying. The sensation was frightening; something was in control of him, and he seemingly had no influence over what was being said or done — or what was going to happen next.

Magnus lunged forward, the same dark tendrils that had brought him to the rooftop in the first place once again erupting from his hands, this time desperately seeking the golden figure. But it was too late; the figure had already moved to another rooftop with such rapidity that he may as well have been teleporting.

“Well, tough shit,” called the golden figure in a mocking tone. “I got one of yours, and before they even knew what was going on. Oh, it was so sweet seeing the life drain out from behind those desperate, sad eyes; how she finally realised that her embracing of the Dark had brought her to the end of her own existence. Delicious. Anyway, got to dash! Later!”

The figure swept off over the rooftops, and before long was out of sight. Magnus considered giving chase, but even in his current state of consciousness, he knew that was a fruitless effort. Instead, he leapt from the rooftop and floated down into the alleyway, an incorporeal cloak of black flowing from beneath his outstretched arms as he defied the laws of gravity without a second thought. Then, as he touched the ground, the primal feeling was gone; he looked at his hands, and the strange, gnarled, mottled appearance they had taken on was gone, too.

He bit his tongue and winced, and realised that he was once again in full control of his own actions; though the biting of the tongue was accidental, it was a perfectly normal thing for him to do, and certainly a far cry from his unusual descent from atop the building.

He looked up and contemplated quite how high the structure was; not only was there no way he should have been able to get up there, thanks to the broken fire escape, but there was no way he should have been able to survive getting back down in the way he did, either. And yet here he was, without a scratch on him, considering the baffling events that had just transpired.

It took him a moment to remember the prone figure of the girl. She was still lying where he had left her; she was obviously dead, though he couldn’t tell how long she had been that way.

“How tragic,” came a voice from behind him. He jumped and span around. As he did so, the world seemed to shimmer and twist, and suddenly everything seemed different to how it had done a moment ago; the air was thicker and darker, and the walls seemed to be covered with things that had not been there before: both words and indecipherable symbols, splattered in the same carefree painter’s hand he had by now seen several times, though they covered the walls with such thick, overlapping intensity that it was impossible to work out what — if anything — any of them were trying to say.

As fast as his heart was beating, he found himself unsurprised to discover the shadowy, silhouetted female figure standing in the alleyway, her pose making it clear that she was contemplating the situation somewhat philosophically, even as it was impossible to make out any of her facial features. She had obviously appeared out of nowhere, but it was already very apparent to Magnus that whatever he had found himself involved with did not involve rational explanations, so he didn’t dwell on it.

“You… knew her?” he asked hesitantly, unsure quite how to address the figure.

“No,” she said. “But I — we — could have done. A life cut tragically short before she could realise her potential.”

A pause.

“Stacey Barman,” said the figure, with the practiced, measured tone of a detective on a crime show. “Twenty-four years old. A wannabe actress, struggling to make ends meet in a scuzzy, cheap, traveller’s hotel.” Here, the figure gestured to the building on one side of the alleyway, which Stacey had apparently come out of before she met her demise. “She was born in the wrong place at the wrong time and made a lot of the wrong choices. Things were not going well for her.”

This sounded alarmingly familiar to Magnus. He felt sorry for Stacey, but he felt that at least part of the empathy he felt towards the dead girl was self-pity because, even from that simple description, he related to her. He may not have been a struggling actor or working in a hotel, but he knew well the feeling of having made a series of poor choices that led to a seemingly inescapable bad situation.

“Our Stacey here may not have been having a lot of luck with life,” continued the shadowy figure, by now pacing around the dead girl’s corpse as if searching for evidence, “but, as I’m sure you know, that only helped draw her towards our side.” She sighed. “She could have been a powerful one. All that dark energy, gone to waste.”

Suddenly, the figure was in Magnus’ face. He wasn’t sure if she had simply moved quickly or had actually vanished from one spot and reappeared in another.

“This is what I was talking about,” the figure hissed. “Stacey shouldn’t have died here. She should have awoken. She should have been like you. But instead, here she is, and once again the Light mocks our efforts and desires for the world to remain in balance; the delightful chaos and unpredictability of existence, at this rate, will be little more than a memory for those of us who are even alive, or…” — here she paused a moment — “…at least aware enough to remember it.”

Magnus wasn’t quite sure how to respond. As he’d said to Dora earlier, the shadowy figure had previously explained the nature of the conflict between the Light and the Dark, but he hadn’t understood what that meant. Now, the grim reality was starting to sink in to his mind; there was a war on, and he wasn’t sure he was on the winning side.

The alleyway was silent for a moment as both Magnus and the shadowy figure continued to contemplate the corpse of Stacey Barman, the warmth of life rapidly leaving her still form as she continued to lie where she had fallen, exposed to the elements, seemingly unwanted and unloved.

Magnus felt an intense surge of pity for her, and seemed to feel something building up inside himself.

“No,” said the figure, not turning to face him. “It’s too late for her. But there’ll be other chances. For now, you should see to it that she is taken care of.”

The strange patterns and words on the walls seemed to twist and shift again, then the shadowy figure was gone, and Magnus was left standing alone in the alleyway.

He dropped to his knees in front of Stacey Barman’s body and felt himself starting to cry. He wondered if this could have been him — why it wasn’t him — and what all this meant. His mind was a jumble of complex emotions and confused interpretations of everything that had happened recently.

He let the tears flow; he knew better than to try and stop his emotions from overflowing when they were bubbling up like this. And, as he’d experienced so many times before, the storm eventually calmed; the pouring of tears slowed; gulping, sobbing gasps gave way to more regular breathing. It was always calm after the storm; he was always at his most rational after he had allowed himself to overflow and explode. He knew what he needed to do.

He pulled out his phone — which had somehow managed to stay in his pocket amid the earlier chaos — and called for the emergency services. He reported Stacey’s body, and its location, and that she had already passed away. Then, once he was satisfied he had done his duty, he headed back up the alleyway he had earlier made the ill-fated decision to investigate; before long, he was back on the road, his pace quickening until he broke into a jog, then a full-on run.

He reached the front door of his building as he heard the howling of sirens in the distance.

“I’m sorry, Stacey,” he said out loud to himself as he looked up at the moonlit, cloudy sky. “I wish I could have helped you. But I hope wherever you are now that you find happiness and peace.”

He opened the door to his building, unlocked his flat’s front door, went inside without turning any of the lights on and collapsed face-first onto the bed. He didn’t wake up — or even move — until the following morning.

[Back to the start.]

---

 

“So.”

“So.”

Now the pair of them were here, neither of them were quite sure what to say. They both already knew the pertinent details, having shared them via chat message prior to meeting up. But, given the eerie similarities between their experiences — and the aspects in which they were complete opposites, too — they had both agreed that meeting up to discuss things in person would probably be more productive.

So far it hadn’t been, largely because despite the strange happenings, it felt like just a regular, normal day. People were going about their business in the coffee shop; conversation was occasionally drowned out by the enormous coffee machine and its overenthusiastic milk frother; no-one gave Magnus and Dora a second glance. To any passers-by, they would have looked just like two people sitting together, sharing some time with one another, though the more voyeuristic might have mistaken them for a couple, given the amount of time they were spending looking directly at one another.

Eventually, Magnus spoke after swallowing a mouthful of cappuccino.

“There’s more,” he said. “More than what I told you before, that is.”

“Oh?” said Dora, interested. There was more to her experience than what she had shared, too, but she was curious to hear what Magnus said first, so she didn’t bring it up.

“Yes,” he said. “It feels… kind of silly to be talking about it, though. I mean…” — here he lowered his voice a little — “…magic. Or whatever it is. Energy. Life force. I don’t know. She explained it all, but it went over my head a bit.”

“She?” asked Dora, one eyebrow raised quizzically.

“Yes,” Magnus said again. “She. After that initial… dream, or whatever it was, I started noticing strange things happening. And eventually, everything seemed to sort of… black out. Though not like it being dark; more like… I don’t know. The world felt kind of… wrong. I knew where I was, but things didn’t look right. And there she was.”

He paused. He wasn’t quite sure how to describe the shadowy figure, since she was such an ill-defined presence. But he could tell that she was a woman, or at least a female presence, since he wasn’t quite sure if being incorporeal allowed one to continue being called a “woman” or “man”.

Dora had heard enough already. She felt comfortable about speaking up now.

“Did she happen to say something about our world, and how it was made?” she asked. She was surprised how confident she sounded asking such a peculiar question. “Did she happen to mention anything about the light…”

“…and the dark?” Magnus concluded for her. “Yes, as a matter of fact.” He frowned. “Wait, how do you know that? Did you…”

“Yes,” said Dora with a gentle smile. “The same thing happened to me. After a few days of strange happenings — in my case, really weird stuff like the little ‘un falling over and scraping both her knees, then there being absolutely no sight of any injury moments later — something similar happened to me. There was… someone. I couldn’t quite see them, not clearly, anyway, but there they were. Some sort of presence. A guy… or the ghost of a guy, or something. Hard to explain, really.”

“Hmm,” said Magnus. The two of them were quiet for a moment, and took the opportunity to have another sip of drink, neither taking their eyes from the other.

“Anyway,” said Magnus after a moment. “There was some sort of fantasyland bullshit about the balance between light and dark, and how things looked like being thrown out of balance if things carried on the way they were, and…”

“I’ll just stop you there,” said Dora with a gentle laugh. “I don’t think it’s ‘bullshit’, not if we’ve both seen weird stuff like this going on. Unless we’re both very, very ill indeed and having some sort of shared hallucination. Then that really would be bullshit; the sort of clichéd crap that’s straight out of a cheap novel you’d pick up at the airport.”

Magnus smiled. It felt good. He felt like he hadn’t done it genuinely for a while, but despite the strange — and slightly frightening — situation in which he found himself, it felt good, particularly to have something private that he and Dora could share together. He wondered if she felt the same way.

As a matter of fact, she did; life had been boring lately and, while she hadn’t quite had something as grandiose as whatever this was in mind, she was grateful for a little injection of excitement.

“What I don’t get,” said Magnus after another sip of coffee, “is how things are being thrown out of whack. I mean, have you noticed anything weird about the world lately?”

“You mean despite… everything that we’ve just talked about?” she said with a laugh. “No, I guess not. But perhaps we weren’t in a position to notice. Perhaps whatever is happening to us is something to do with it.”

“Mm,” said Magnus, his eyes finally looking away from Dora. She realised that she had been tense all the while he had been staring at her, and suddenly relaxed somewhat. “Maybe.”

“I wonder,” said Dora. “All this light and dark business. I mean, obviously I’m light and you’re dark, whatever that means. Are we going to end up fighting?”

“That’s how these things tend to go,” said Magnus, “at least in clichéd crap that’s straight out of a cheap novel you’d pick up at the airport.” He chuckled at his own allusion.

“I’m serious!” said Dora, pouting slightly. “I don’t want to end up having to do anything weird or nasty to you. Not like that,” she corrected herself quickly before Magnus could slip in a quick innuendo. “I mean… kind of seems like we’re opposites, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we have to go against one another. Opposites attract and all that.”

 

*       *       *       *       *

It was getting dark — and several coffees later — by the time the pair of them went their separate ways. Concluding that they couldn’t do much else with their respective strange phenomena until something else odd happened to one or both of them, conversation had turned to all things trivial: what had been on television the previous evening, how much both of them hated Magnus’ ex — though Magnus always felt guilty any time he bad-mouthed her, even despite the depression and rage she frequently provoked in him — and the silly things little Alice had done. The socialisation had done them both some good, and they both left the coffee shop with smiles on their faces.

Dora had offered Magnus a lift back to his flat, but he had refused; he’d decided that he wanted some time alone with his thoughts. He often found that if he walked and thought, he could contemplate things more effectively than if he was just shut in his flat all alone, surrounded by memories in physical form.

Of course, there were a lot fewer of these left lying around now that she had been back and collected her things. The flat had felt disturbingly empty after she had been and gone, so Magnus had taken the time to rearrange the furniture as much as possible so it felt like he was in a different place. It had proven mostly effective, but the bedroom which, thanks to its built-in wardrobe, was harder to rearrange, still held potent memories. He found himself sleeping on the sofa rather than the cold bedroom a lot more these days, frequently drifting off to the low drone of inoffensive, mind-numbing late night digital TV.

His footsteps echoed as he paced along the street. He felt like he was walking with purpose, though he was in no hurry to get home; there was very little for him there. After a moment he slowed, then stopped. He wasn’t sure why, initially, then he felt an overwhelming surge of curiosity.

There was an alleyway that he walked past every time he went from his flat to the centre of town and back again, and he had always wondered what was down there. He doubted it was anything interesting, so he had never just wandered in to take a look, but for some reason, now he found himself once again walking with a strong sense of purpose, this time towards the alleyway.

It was a narrow passage between two buildings, and in the fading light there wasn’t a lot to see, since neither building had many windows on this side. There was the odd frosted glass window that Magnus assumed was a bathroom or similar, and occasionally these cast a small pool of light into the otherwise darkened alleyway, but for the most part the passage was unlit.

It was a dead end, though it opened into what appeared to be a small courtyard rather than simply terminating in a wall. The courtyard had a few dumpsters in it and smelled awful. Both buildings seemingly had back doors here, presumably to allow the occupants to take out their rubbish and throw them in the dumpsters. But there was something else; something lying on the floor.

“Holy fuck,” said Magnus as he approached the lump on the ground. It was a person, and they didn’t appear to be in a good way. He knelt before the figure and established that it was a woman, probably in her mid-twenties — about his age — clad simply in a T-shirt and jeans. She was lying face-down on the ground, and the area around her head was slick with still-wet blood. It was obviously too late for her, and Magnus started to feel panicked, both about being caught with her, and about whether or not whoever — if anyone — had done this to her was still around.

Then he felt it. He couldn’t describe the sensation, but it was there. He looked in the direction he felt it was coming from; up and to his left. There was what appeared to be a fire escape on the side of the building, but it abruptly terminated two floors up from the ground and there was seemingly no ladder allowing anyone to get up — or, for that matter, down.

A primal feeling in his brain told him that he really needed to get up there right now, but the rational part of his mind — which, he felt, was rapidly losing influence in this situation — said that there was absolutely no way that he could possibly–

Before he knew it, he felt the strange sensation of energy surging through his hands. They took on the curiously odd appearance they had done any time the strange events had happened recently, but this time there was something more; it felt like energy was focusing in them, and the more it did so, the more mottled and marked they became, until eventually they looked like an old man’s hands; gnarled and covered with varicose veins. A high-pitched whining sound assaulted his ears, and his head began to ache, as if it was about to explode. Was this the power that the shadowy figure had talked about? And if so, how on Earth was he supposed to control it?

Unsure of anything else to do, he clenched his fists and pointed them both at the fire escape high above him. Tendrils as black as night erupted from the back of his hands and laced themselves around the bars of the fire escape’s guard rail, and before he could register his intense surprise at what he had apparently just done, he felt himself being yanked violently into the air, his heart in his mouth as if he was riding a theme park attraction. Almost before he knew it, he was standing on the platform of the fire escape, some two storeys off the ground.

And that primal feeling was still there; he needed to continue on upwards, to chase down whoever had done this, and to punish them.

His rational mind finally gave up trying and just slipped away quietly, and the primal urge took over as he raced up the steps to the rooftop.

[Back to the start.]

---

 

Dora couldn’t sleep; a situation exacerbated by the usual thunderous snoring of her husband Donald on the other side of the bed. Every night, she found herself surprised that the racket didn’t disturb their eight-year-old daughter Alice, but it never did: Alice was a heavy sleeper, a trait which she had apparently inherited from her father.

She sighed to herself and tapped on her phone, its screen springing to life at her touch. She frowned at the sight of the clock on the screen: two in the morning; she had to be up in four hours to make sure Alice was ready for school, that breakfast was ready for everyone and that she was in a position to go out to work straight after dropping Alice off.

For the most part, Dora enjoyed being what she thought of as a “traditional” mother figure, albeit one who held down a job as well as effectively running the household. Donald would be the first to describe himself as “useless” around the house, and she didn’t mind too much; he was the one with the high-paying job, after all, so it was largely his money coming in that allowed the Miller family to continue to live in the manner which they had become accustomed to. Her income was a bonus on top of that; Donald had been initially resistant to the idea of her going back to work after Alice was old enough to go to school, but Dora had found herself so bored each day that she craved the opportunity to get out of the house and speak to other human beings that her office job offered, even if the work itself was considerably beneath her intellectual capacity. She eventually managed to convince Donald that it was the best for everybody involved.

At least the downtime in her job — and there was a lot of it — afforded her the opportunity to catch up with friends via text message and email; after an initial run-in with the company’s IT department over the use of company equipment to send personal messages, she’d confined these activities to her phone, and no-one seemed to mind that too much.

She’d known Magnus for a short while; they’d met by chance through a social networking website, and quickly become friends. Magnus didn’t seem to her like the type who made friends easily, but there was something about him that interested her; she knew quickly that he was someone who carried great sadness with him, but he often managed to push that aside and demonstrate a touch of cheeky humour of just the type she responded well to.

She could tell that he was attracted to her, and during some of the “down” periods of her occasionally rocky relationship with Donald, she’d contemplated seeing just what might happen if she allowed things to progress in the way he wanted. But she held back, even though she knew this might hurt him in the short term; he was going through a relationship breakup of his own, after all, and for her to be the “other woman” even as he suspected he had been cheated on would be somewhat hypocritical, to say the least. She didn’t want to put him in a difficult situation, and she didn’t want to break up her family life, either; it wasn’t perfect, not by a considerable margin, but it was holding together for now.

She was worried about Magnus, though. He had not taken the break-up well, and their meeting the other day had only confirmed to her what she had suspected: he was starting to lose his grip on rationality. She didn’t begrudge him his anger and sadness, of course — they’d had some long talks about how things had got to the state they were in, and she’d come to understand him perhaps even better than his partner had — but she was still worried, particularly after the strange things he’d described and asked her about.

The snoring was momentarily interrupted as Donald’s imposing figure rolled over in the bed, but quickly resumed. Dora sighed, resigning herself to the fact that she probably wasn’t going to be getting to sleep any time soon, stood up, walked out of her room and headed downstairs to the kitchen to fix herself a drink.

Decaffeinated coffee in hand — she had a weakness for it, particularly since Donald had bought her a capsule coffee machine a short while ago — she wandered into the living room and opened the curtains. Their house was right at the end of a cul-de-sac, and had a good view up the rest of the road. It made her feel like the lady of the manor, and she often enjoyed just standing here, looking out from behind the house’s net curtains, surveying the rest of the street and seeing what everyone else was up to.

Tonight, though, things were different; as she pulled back the curtains she paused and drew a sharp intake of breath, because she was really not expecting what she saw.

It was light. But it couldn’t be. She tapped on her phone and checked the clock again; sure enough, the hour digit still read “2”. There was no way that the street outside should be lit in such a way, but the evidence was right there in front of her.

She guzzled the last of her coffee, not caring that it was still a little bit too hot and burned her tongue, and put the cup down on the windowsill. She was confused and a little disturbed by whatever the strange phenomenon was outside her front window, but she was surprised to find herself more curious than frightened. So curious that, before she knew it, and as if something else was in control of her body, she was pulling on her coat over the top of her nightgown and squeezing her bare feet into a pair of shoes that she’d left by the door.

She opened the front door and looked out into the street. It was light, but there was something very different about this light to regular daylight. The sky wasn’t blue, for a start; it was pure, brilliant white and seemed to glow. This wasn’t the white of an overcast sky, either; it was as if the sky itself was glowing, bathing the whole street in a soft light that felt calm, but cold.

It was cold, too; there didn’t seem to be a breeze, but Dora could still feel a chill on her face as she stepped over the threshold of her house and into the front garden. She wasn’t sure where she was going to go, but something was pushing her onwards, out into this peculiar soft light. There was something out there; something beyond what she could see, and she needed to know what it was.

The thoughts in her head surprised her; she wasn’t usually the type to seek out mysteries or strange happenings like this, but there was something irresistible about this one. Perhaps it was simply the fact that it was a change from the drudgery of everyday life, or perhaps there was something more; she didn’t know.

She was halfway up the street by now, and she noticed that the end of the road seemed to fade into a pale haze, like a thick, impenetrable fog that was glowing from within. Still she continued to walk towards it; answers were inside that strange cloud, she felt, and she wanted to know what they were.

She approached the haze; it almost appeared like a wall, but she knew that there was nothing to it, and that she could walk right through it, should she so desire. And she did desire; she took a step forward and was instantly surrounded on all sides by the soft but cold white light that had been illuminating her street.

The fog — whatever it was — was so thick that she could no longer even see her arms in front of her, and it didn’t take long for her to feel disoriented. She could no longer feel the solidity of the ground beneath her feet; it was as if she had left her body and was simply floating in a void filled with light.

Perhaps she was; she couldn’t explain it, but she felt completely at ease here. It felt natural and good, though still cold. It didn’t feel like the warm, benevolent glow she had come to associate with the concept of “heaven” during her formative years; it was just light. A strange, calming light that seemed to be encouraging her to relax, to let it flow through her, to just…

Her eyes snapped open, and she blinked a few times. She couldn’t see anything at all. Had she gone blind? No; it was just the darkness of her bedroom. She recognised the sound of Donald snoring beside her, the softness of the mattress beneath her body, the warmth of the duvet she was snuggled under. All was as it should be. Her eyes started to adjust to the darkness, and she made out familiar shapes, and she felt at ease.

A dream, then, she thought, but a very strange one. Then she paused, her mind slowly recalling some of the things Magnus had said to her regarding his peculiar dream. Her experience — for the memory was still fresh and vivid in her mind — felt eerily familiar as she recalled the details Magnus had described, only in her case, it felt as if she had had almost the complete opposite experience. Darkness was replaced by light; fear by calm. What did it mean?

She rolled over onto her side, trying to get comfortable again. She felt tired and wanted to sleep; she could think about this more when the morning come, and perhaps even talk it over with Magnus. For now, she just wanted to…

She froze as her eyes alighted on the wall occupied by her dressing table.

Written on the wall, in letters that seemed to glow without illuminating the room itself, and in a beautiful, elegant cursive hand, was a single word: “HELLO.”

Suddenly, she felt afraid. The strange dream and the eerie, cold light didn’t feel quite so calming any more; now, they felt like a symptom of something that was very, very wrong indeed — with her mind, or with the world, she couldn’t tell. But it was frightening, and she wasn’t sure what to make of it right now in her all-but-exhausted state.

So she curled up into a foetal position, screwed her eyes up and tried as best she could to put the strange happenings out of her mind. It was not something she’d ever been particularly good at: her mind was particularly active at night, and whenever she tried to send a signal to herself not to think about something, her mind usually interpreted this as a request to think about it as much as possible. Sure enough, after a moment, she couldn’t hold herself back any longer; still curled up, she opened her eyes and looked at the spot on the wall where the beautifully written word had been.

Of course, there was nothing there; the wall was bare, and all she could make out was the rough silhouette of her dressing table.

Of course there’s nothing there, she thought. It’s just the last remnants of a dream. That’s all it is.